Ayesha, one of the nine wives of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.)

Compiled by: Syed Ali Shahbaz
On 23rd of the Islamic month of Sha’ban in 678 AD, Ayesha died in Medina at the age of 65 years. She was one of the nine wives Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) had married out of social necessity in the last ten years of his life following the passing away of the First Lady of Islam, Omm al-Momineen (Mother of True Believers), Hazrat Khadija (SA), with whom he spent over 25 years of marital bliss and through her became the father of the noblest-ever lady, Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA).
It is said Ayesha was killed by the Omayyad ruler Mua’wiyya ibn Abu Sufyan who had usurped the caliphate and intended to pass it on to his lecherous son, Yazid. Thus in order to remove a potential opponent to his plan, he devised the death of Ayesha by inviting her to a feast and seating her over a booby-trapped limestone well into which she fell and died.
Mua’wiyya had not forgotten her rabble-rousing role decades ago against his Omayyad kinsman the 3rd caliph, Othman bin Affan, whom she used to call an apostate and who was eventually murdered. He also remembered her causing the first armed fitna (sedition) in Islam by leading an army of oath-breakers against the Prophet's rightful successor, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS) at Basra in Iraq, where she was soundly defeated, but magnanimously treated and allowed to go back respectfully to Medina.